gate

DeLorean-like hovercraft tools around near Golden Gate Bridge

A 26-year-old graduate student named Matthew Riese has an ambition to create a business building custom hovercrafts. And he's making waves -- literally -- on the way to realizing that dream.

On Saturday, Riese's vehicle took a brief dip in the water and then spun out on a beach in San Francisco, giving tourists taking in views of the Golden Gate Bridge something entirely unexpected to photograph and show the folks back home. This wasn't the first time Riese's invention has made its way into San Francisco Bay. Here's a recording made last year of … Read more

How to manage OS X Gatekeeper from the command line

Gatekeeper is a new security measure introduced in OS X Mountain Lion that allows the system to prevent the execution of code that does not meet certain criteria, such as possessing a valid digital signature from Apple's developer community. When setting up GateKeeper in the Security system preferences, you can set it so that only approved applications from the Mac App Store are allowed to run, additionally allow programs from approved developers to run, or you can set no restrictions and allow everything to run.

When the restrictions are set, you can still run unapproved programs by right-clicking them … Read more

Gates, Ellison, other tech moguls got richer last year

It's said that the rich get richer. And that's certainly true at the moment in the tech world.

Grabbing Bloomberg's No. 2 spot among the world's top billionaries, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates has an estimated worth of $63.4 billion as of yesterday. Despite donating a hefty amount of money to charitable causes, Gates' net worth managed to rise 1.1 percent over the past year, making him the richest tech mogul on the list.

Worth $40.7 billion, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison saw a 3.6 percent gain in his fortune last year. The largest … Read more

Condoleezza Rice, Robert Gates sign deal with Khosla Ventures

A consulting firm owned by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has inked a deal with venture capital firm Khosla Ventures.

RiceHadleyGates announced today that it will provide "strategic insight" to Khosla Ventures in an effort to help the venture-capital firm's portfolio companies "make critical business decisions around expanding to markets like China, India, and Brazil."

"We look forward to putting our network and experience to good use by helping the Khosla companies navigate the tricky waters of political, policy, and regulatory issues around the world," … Read more

Hot new games for iOS

The stars lined up just right this week (read: gift-giving season is here!) to have a number of awesome game sequels and new releases launch all at once. Frankly, there are so many new games that there is no better time than the present to check out what the App Store has to offer.

Rick Broida already wrote about Grand Theft Auto: Vice City earlier today, but there are plenty more that would make nice additions to your iOS gaming collection.

This week's collection of apps is a group of excellent games released over the course of this week. … Read more

Bill Gates twixt Putin and pope at No. 4 in Forbes 'most powerful'

Wielding both wealth and influence, Bill Gates is the world's fourth most powerful person, as ranked by Forbes.

Rising to fourth place from fifth last year, Gates was cited by Forbes for his vast fortune. The Microsoft co-founder is worth $65 billion even after donating more than $28 billion toward various causes.

But it's also his mission and his influence that make Gates a powerful man.

As co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, he's been on a quest to stamp out a variety of diseases around the world. As Forbes notes, Gates estimates that the … Read more

Artist creates stunning insects from old watch parts

Despite my small fear of bugs, there's just something creepily cute about these mechanical insects by Justin Gershenson-Gates.

Gates, a self-taught tinkerer, usually sells jewelry accented with watch gears on his Web site A Mechanical Mind, but people can't seem to get enough of his occasional arthropods made from watch parts, tiny lightbulbs, and other bits and bobs.

In an e-mail interview with Crave, Gates revealed the inspiration behind these creepy designs: a recent trip featuring a freak spider encounter -- "with a leg span of about 3 inches," he says -- prompted the idea. After returning from vacation, Gates created a set of spider legs with watch-winding stems and tacked on other watch parts to create his first spider. … Read more

Bill Gates' and Paul Allen's friendship repaired?

When Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen published his book "Idea Man" last year, he surprised many people by tearing into his longtime friend and business partner Bill Gates.

In a new epilogue published for the paperback version of this book, which comes out this week, Allen writes that after a yearlong rift, the two men have repaired their friendship, according to GeekWire.

"Not everyone loved everything I wrote," Allen writes. "Some of my Microsoft friends were piqued that I'd cast the company's recent history in 'not the most favorable light,' as one of them … Read more

Big surprise: Bill Gates thinks Windows 8 is great

Bill Gates is giving some initial feedback about Windows 8, and it's no shocker that he thinks the operating system is pretty nifty.

The Microsoft co-founder and chairman, speaking in a video interview with Microsoft's Steve Clayton, echoes CEO Steve Ballmer in calling Windows 8 an "absolutely critical product" that combines "the best" of tablets and traditional PCs.

Gates noted that people will be "amazed at the energy" Microsoft is putting behind its new products, and he said Windows 8 "is key to where personal computing is going."

"This … Read more

The Golden Gate gets a big gun

Visitors to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, just north of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge, will soon be able to check out a massive new World War II-era battleship gun.

The 16-inch gun, originally mounted on the USS Missouri, saw significant action during World War II, and according to the National Park Service, is featured prominently in photographs of the Japanese surrender ceremony that took place aboard the Missouri on Sept. 2, 1945. It will soon be installed in Battery Townsley, in the Marin Headlands area of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

Weighing in at 120 … Read more